Tom Cryer sues Rebecca O'Dell for Defamation
Bob Hurt
Tom Cryer has filed a lawsuit (see below press release) against Rebecca O’Dell for defaming him in comments she made to subscribers of the St. Pete area Constitution Party meetup group. When I saw her comments, seemingly timed to coincide with Tommy’s upcoming Tea Party Squared tour of 7 Florida cities, I felt shocked because 1) they did not constitute truth, and 2) they seemed so atypical of an attorney because of their libelous nature.
I forwarded them to Tommy. He wrote a correction to Rebecca and told her, effectively, that if she’d find laws making people liable, he’d let her off the hook. She published a partial-correction letter to her readers, but she otherwise spurned his mercy. So, he sued.
The lawsuit does not please me, but then neither have I felt pleased about Rebecca’s intransigent attitude about the implementation of income tax in America, nor her attack on Tommy. And, Tommy should protect his reputation.
She told me repeatedly that she did not like income tax, but that the courts say we all have to pay it, and we need to do that and take up the issue with Congress. I told her that the income tax as implemented violates Article I Section 2 Clause 3 and Section 9 Clause 4 of the US Constitution. She seemed to think that since the lower courts have ruled thousands of times in favor of the IRS , they must be right.
Rebecca wrote me, in effect, that if she believed me, stopped paying tax as a consequence, and the IRS attacked her and prevailed against her, she’d sue me for damages for misleading her. She seemed pretty hostile about all the anti-income-tax gurus causing so many people to lose fortunes to the IRS and losing liberty to the courts.
I guess that hostility spilled over onto Tom Cryer when I sent her his memorandum. She must have thought him one of the anti-income-tax gurus who tells people to stop filing and stop paying. But Tom has repeatedly explained, effectively, that such an action constitutes financial suicidal, and we can only prevail in that if many millions of Americans do it at the same time. Tom has said that we must work together on ALL FRONTS of activism, politically, socially, legally, and financially, to attack and defeat IRS abuses and the courts and politicians who support them.
For several years I have advocated out and out legal attacks against IRS agents who abuse individuals – find the IRS agent errors, then demand correction, and failing correction, sue them and file administrative and criminal complaints against them. If EVERYBODY did this, IRS abuses would stop. Unfortunately, most people take Rebecca’s position and cave in to them without a fight.
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Bob Hurt • Lawmen • Files • Archive • Scholarship • Jurisdictionary • GetZooks!
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From: Tom Cryer
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 1:48 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Update
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INTERNET DIATRIBE
LANDS FLORIDA EMAILER IN COURT
SHREVEPORT, LA—In a law suit filed by Louisiana attorney Tommy K. Cryer a Florida woman is being taken to task for distributing an email containing what Cryer’s suit alleges is a string of false and defamatory claims. According to the law suit filed in Shreveport, Louisiana, Rebecca O’Dell Townsend, a St. Petersburg, FL, attorney, published and distributed emails falsely accusing Cryer of being a disbarred tax evader who does not believe there is any such thing as a federal individual income tax.
Cryer, who has been in uninterrupted law practice in Louisiana for over 36 years and who was cleared of tax evasion and willful failure to file charges by a unanimous “not guilty” jury verdict, says "I have no idea what prompted Townsend to fabricate and publish the false statements. Call me old fashioned, but I don't understand why some people feel compelled to lie."
At the time Truth Attack (www.truthattack.org), a non-profit political action organization, which Cryer founded and heads up and whose stated mission is “putting the government back in its box—one tentacle at a time,” was in the process of promoting and conducting seminars for tea party and other political activists on what they called “The Lost Art of Citizenry”. The seminars offered instruction on how to organize and coordinate group activities, how to learn about our rights and government’s limitations, ways to distribute information to the public and inside information on how to influence representatives' and government officials’ actions.
Barely a week before the seven seminars were to begin Townsend published and distributed a blistering mass emailing that was distributed widely across the internet, stating that Cryer was a disbarred tax evader who contended that there is no such thing as a federal individual income tax and that Cryer and those associated with him “have left a wake of destroyed families in their wake.” Cryer said “I am not nor have I ever been disbarred, I am not a tax evader and have never destroyed a family in my life, let alone a 'wake of families', whatever that means.”
Now Cryer has filed suit in Shreveport seeking damages for defamation. Cryer said “I don’t know this woman and have never heard of her before. I don't know why she made up and published all these lies about me and my organization, but I will not sit idly by while someone attempts to destroy an unsullied reputation I have spent a lifetime in building.”
Source: Truth Attack
Contact: Jim Kerr, 318 795-2030
Interviews available on request